The map is divided in tiles, which allows us to edit these tiles separately.

That way the landscape is split so we can work

one person per tile essentially and then we have some levels that are essentially invisible and they go over it like another layer that usually contain the gameplay stuff.

We can work on tiles while at the same time gameplay can be added on top of that in another level.

So here you can see the exploration level is loaded and there's a slug and a creature spawn point in it and they will disappear if I unload the level.

And when I load it back in, they will reappear again.

There you go.

Gameplay level design and more aesthetic level design, I guess that's how you could separate it, is that we look at the purpose of an area.

Is this meant to be early game, a large building area?

Does it need to have a lot of open spaces?

We take that into account.

Is it more an end game area?

Does it need more obstacles?

Is it more difficult?

Then we tend to make it difficult to navigate, to traverse, etc.

So we can start with the big stuff like that.

We just start building and then occasionally have an idea of like, oh, this would be like a cool arena type thing for enemies or whatever.

We make stuff and then the gameplay level designers have to sort of like try to make it work.

I don't think any area in the game is done right now.

Specifically right now we're really taking a look at okay, what do we need for it to be done?

And there's quite a lot of plans still.

Drawing that line of when is it done is so difficult and you really have to sort of just really look at like what is the experience we're planning to give, what is the style we have and stick to that as much as we can.

We're not building the most hyper-realistic world simulator here, so we can get away with some things.

We're building a certain experience, and that's always something I have to keep in mind, like, you know, don't go too far.